I’ve spent so much time carefully building self confidence, nurturing wounds inflicted during childhood with careless words flung like bullets at my little child’s heart by callous adults. I admit that my past catches me from behind sometimes (as all cowardly acts do) and holds me in a deadly grip; I start to feel the life force seeping from me, losing passion for creativity, writing, travel even for friends; it’s almost as if an internal struggle between life and death takes place in my mind and it takes every cell in my body not to give up on me. Then I remember to look at fear, I remember to look at doubt, I remember to step back and look at failure and the reminders thereof as if they are people I no longer associate with or an old untrustworthy car I used to drive but now I fly. More importantly though, I remember to forgive because they did not know what they were doing. I remember that the most powerful weapon in my artillery is forgiveness and that includes forgiving myself. I love the word “grace”, it means forgiveness even when guilty and that is what I strive for. Healing comes one positive affirmation at a time, one good thought at a time like little petals that ultimately form a beautiful flower, like raindrops that swell into a powerful lake, moments of right choices add up into days that turn into lifestyle.
It’s a topic very close to my heart; I do not think that parents and family in general are aware of what deep wounds they inflect into a child when they say negative, discouraging things. I have not really found just one specific habit that heals but I have found a way to move on from a damaged soul and still be happy: speaking to myself lovingly each day almost as if I were a little girl again (not in a weird Twin Peaks kind of way … no weirdness) but just encourage and remind myself that all those people in my past, have the right to have been wrong.